Eric T. Petersen argues that while there have been a number of major buys and mergers in the Web analytics industry, Yahoo's IndexTools grab has the potential to be the "permanent game changer." The popularity of IndexTools' analytics suite stems from the quality of its functionality and support--at a fraction of the cost of some of the bigger solutions, Petersen says. Meanwhile, Google has already established an analytics consultant network--which, in theory, could serve as a ready-made distribution channel for a Yahoo-branded IndexTools solution. Petersen says that those two factors combined with the vast reach (and rich demographic …

Some paid search marketing platforms may allow you to bid on a competitor's branded keywords, but you should steer clear of their trademarks when it comes to organic optimization. As per an 11th circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, injecting another company's trademarked terms into your site's meta tags (be it title, description or any other tag) can cause consumer confusion and thus constitute trademark infringement. The ruling upheld a district court's decision that Axiom Worldwide infringed on American Medical Corp.'s trademark when it used the terms "Accu-Spina" and "IDD Therapy" in its meta tags--particularly in its description …

Search is chewing up other media budgets, according to the latest Search Engine Marketing: User and Spending Trends report from eMarketer. According to the online marketing research firm's analysts, "Even as some marketers rein in spending to hedge against further economic problems, search engine marketing (SEM) is in great shape--at least for the moment." EMarketer is predicting U.S. search marketing spending to top $13.6 billion this year, slightly lower than SEMPO's prediction of $15.7 billion. And search marketers seem to be comfortable maintaining or increasing their spend, even as average CPCs trend upward. "About three-quarters of respondents worldwide …

Real estate and property search engine Trulia has incorporated Google Maps Street View data into its listings. The company will show the real-life images of homes for sale, recently sold homes and public property records in more than 40 metropolitan areas (where Street View is currently available). Trulia trumpets the many benefits of having the Street View data for potential home buyers--and it goes beyond seeing the outside condition of a property. The company encourages users to assess things like the safety and quality of the neighborhood, the parking situation, and the accessibility of local staples like laundromats …

Another month, another search market share report. Google's first, Yahoo's second and Microsoft is a distant third... yawn. But according to Compete, March's search market share report is actually full of madness--and its all because of an almost 30% jump in monthly search volume for MSN. Queries on MSN Live Search shot up by 28.8%, increasing the software giant's overall market share up to slightly over 10%. "My guess is that there are some dollars flowing out of Redmond that may be driving this," says Jeremy Crane. Though Crane and the Compete team aren't exactly sure what drove …

Efficient Frontier serves up data on average search CPCs by category for March and their stats show an upward trend in click prices across the board. Interestingly, CPCs in the overall financial category were up by an average of 9%--perhaps as a result of more consumers seeking out financial info in the midst of the economic slowdown. For example, CPCs for credit-related search terms were up from $2.65 in February to $3.30 in March, a 25% increase. The average CPC for a mortgage-related search term hit $2.32 in March, up 13%; and auto finance CPCs rose by 7% …

So a hacker or competitor has penetrated your site's source code and installed malicious scripts or programs. The first step is to get your site offline (temporarily) as fast as possible so that you don't infect visitors unnecessarily. Speed may be a problem if you're using a shared hosting service, so try using a 503 status code in the meantime, to keep the engine's spiders from crawling. The Google Webmaster Tools URL Removal tool can also help with preventing incoming traffic. The next step is to figure out what the hacker was after. Was it consumer or employee …

Google's AdWords far outshines its competitors in terms of ease of use as a paid search marketing platform, but it's still not perfect. For Jeremy Mayes, AdWords stumbles when it comes to two key characteristics--the default disabling of the Quality Score column in the account screen, and the automatic enabling of inclusion in the content network from the start. "Google, put the same effort into making sure all of your advertisers see the Quality Score from day 1 as you do in preaching its importance every step of the way and everyone will win," Mayes says. "Advertisers …

Eric Enge follows up a post on how to recognize a bad search firm with this list of actions and results you can expect from a good search firm. Up first is the fact that a good search firm (or consultant) won't just tell you what you want to hear. "Remember, the reason why you are bringing in an SEO is that you have a problem," Enge says. "It's their job to help you understand the nature of the problem and the fix." In addition to being brutally honest, a good search firm will explain everything they're …